The Devil's Brew: Hilary Manningham-Butler, #3

By Jack Treby

"Your predecessor was sitting in that chair when he shot himself. You can still see the blood stains on the wall behind you."

Central America, 1931. Hilary Manningham-Butler is settling into her new job as passport control officer at the British legation in Guatemala City. Her predecessor Giles Markham is dead, having embezzled a large sum of money from the office's visa receipts and then taken his own life. Freddie Reeves, a friend at the legation, believes there is more to his death than suicide. The weekend before he died, Markham spent some time at a remote coffee plantation in the north central highlands. Freddie knows the owner of the plantation and invites Hilary to accompany him there for the weekend, in the hope that she might be able to discover the truth. Hilary has no intention of getting involved, but when a house guest dies in suspicious circumstances it soon becomes clear that she will not be given the choice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carter & Allan
• Release date: Feb 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386629955

Book preview

Chapter One

I have never been much of a one for beating servants. In my experience, violence only serves to breed resentment and with the serving classes that should be avoided at all costs. The schoolmaster’s cane may give much needed direction to the immature mind, but a fully grown man – even a member of the lower orders – should be capable of disciplining himself. If he cannot, he has no business being a servant.

That being said, there are times when I would happily have throttled my man Maurice and Thursday morning was a case in point.

A loud thump from the living room had roused me from my slumber. I had been fast asleep – as any sane person would be at three am – and it took me some time to gather my wits. I pulled a hand from beneath the bed sheets and rubbed my eyes. What the devil was he up to this time? I wondered. The thump was followed by a prolonged and unnatural silence. I lifted myself onto my elbows and peered across the bedroom towards the far door. There was a light flickering beneath the wooden frame; Maurice up and about again for no good reason. I scowled quietly. The man barely seemed to sleep at all. I had almost jumped out of my skin, a couple of weeks earlier, when I had got up in the middle of the night to answer a call of nature and had caught sight of his ghoulish, crumpled face staring up at me from an armchair, a large textbook in his lap. At that time of the morning – four am – anyone with an ounce of sense would have been in the arms of Morpheus, but not my valet. We had had a few words then about his nocturnal activities, but clearly he needed a reminder.

I yawned, stretched myself out and pulled back the bed sheets irritably. I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now, so I might as well give the fellow a piece of my mind. I did not appreciate being woken up like this, in the middle of the night, especially when I had to be up myself in a few hours time, bright and alert.

I reached across to the bedside lamp and flicked the switch. Nothing happened. I let out a growl but I was not surprised. Another power cut. The electricity supply here was about as reliable as the plumbing. That was one of the perils of living in such a backwards part of the world. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and my nightshirt snagged on the mattress. I ruffled it out and planted my feet firmly on the floorboards, flinching momentarily at the sudden cold. It could be a little chilly in the early hours, even here in the tropics. The nightshirt was a necessary bulwark and also served to protect my modesty. It was not the done thing for a woman to sleep au naturel, even in the relative safety of her own apartment.

I pulled myself up and stood for a moment, gazing across at the light underneath the living room door. It did not have the reassuring flicker of a regular candle. The blasted thing seemed to be darting about all over the place. More like a torch, I thought. But why would Maurice be wandering around the place at this hour with a flash light? It took a few seconds for my befuddled brain to stagger towards the obvious conclusion: it might not be Maurice at all.

I moved back to the bed and sat myself down, shivering again. Good god, it might be a burglar. What if some ruffian had broken into the flat and was even now rifling through my possessions? I gripped my hands on the base of the mattress and took a large gulp of air. If there was an intruder, it was probably best not to disturb him. I am no coward – I have faced down all sorts of rogues and scoundrels in my time – but if life has taught me one thing, it is that it is often better not to get involved. There was nothing of any value in the living room. Let the fellow root around if he really wanted to. If I strode out there like some irate landowner, he might well attack me; and burglars in this part of the world were likely to be armed with rather more than the traditional cosh.

The intruder was doing rather a good job of keeping the noise down. Apart from that initial thump, I hadn’t heard anything at all. No sloping footsteps, no cupboards being ransacked. In fact, there did not seem to be any noise at all, even out in the street, though my bedroom window was ajar and the blinds were only half drawn. Perhaps he had got in through the living room window. We were only one floor up and even I could probably have managed to shin up that distance. A narrow balcony ran the length of the apartment, encompassing the living room and the bedroom. I just hoped to God he didn’t decide to extend his search. Perhaps I ought to cough, make some noise to frighten him off. Or perhaps it would be safer just to lie down and pretend to be asleep.

A low groan sounded from the other room. I shuddered, recognising the voice. It was my man Maurice, out there in the thick of it. He did not sound at all well. And, now that I was more alert, it dawned on me what this must mean. He must have heard a noise and got up to investigate; and then, obviously, someone had clobbered him. That was the thump that had woken me up. Lord. If my valet was lying out there with a sizeable dent in the back of his bonce then I couldn’t just ignore it. The burglar might try to finish him off. I had no choice. Somehow, I would have to frighten the blackguard away.

My eyes had now adjusted to the gloom and I glanced around the room for a weapon. Unfortunately, there was nothing suitable to hand. A small silver candle holder next to the lamp shade looked to be my best option. I pulled out the wax stick and grasped the metal disk by the finger hold. That would have to do.

Tentatively, I approached the door. A floorboard creaked beneath me and I cursed it silently. The light from the torch disappeared. I waited a beat, then reached out a hand and grabbed the door handle. I opened it a crack but the living room was in darkness, a much deeper black than the bedroom. The blinds were lowered further out here and I could make out little in the punishing gloom.

Perhaps I had let my imagination run away with me. Maybe my man was up and about on his own and had simply tripped up. If so, I would crucify the fool.

I pulled the door open a little further and then cursed again, realising I would now be visible in silhouette in the doorway. I stepped forward and my foot collided with something solid in front of me. I tripped and stumbled across the carpet, crashing hard into the back of the sofa. My hands grabbed hold of the top of it and I managed to steady myself. At that moment, I heard the door slam on the far side of the living room. Our intruder had fled the scene.

Edging around the sofa, I tottered blindly towards the far wall and searched for a light switch. I flicked the control but nothing happened. Damn it. I had forgotten about the power cut. I cursed a third time and then heard another low moan from behind me. Maurice was lying on the floor between my bedroom door and the sofa. It must have been him I tripped over.

‘Morris?’ I called out, with some concern. I always called him Morris rather than Maurice. It was a private joke, though more for my amusement than his. The valet let out another groan.

I moved across to the window and grasped for one of the hanging cords. I caught it and pulled the wire taught, rotating the blinds sideways. At last a small shaft of moonlight illuminated the chamber. I glanced around the room. A set of drawers had been quietly ransacked to the right of the windows. Papers were strewn everywhere. I fumbled inside the bureau for a candle and a box of matches. Before I could complete the action, the electric light bulb stuttered into life and the room was bathed in a dim glow.

Maurice was just beginning to rouse himself. He was clutching the back of his head and frowning slightly.

‘Morris, are you all right? What happened?’

The man took a moment to recover himself. ‘I heard a noise, Monsieur. I came out to investigate.’ Maurice was a tall, thickset Frenchman in his mid-fifties. He was dressed in a light but well cut dressing gown. He raised a hand to the back of his head and then, without fuss, examined the residue on his palm. A little blood but nothing serious. ‘I believe I may have been struck from behind,’ he said. The fellow had a knack for understatement.

‘Sit down,’ I told him. I moved over to the side table and poured out a glass of whisky. I downed the liquid in one and then dished out a second glass for Maurice. Ordinarily, I would not have allowed him to drink in the flat, but these were exceptional circumstances.

Maurice had been my valet for about a year and a half now. He was a grim, taciturn man with a craggy face and a permanently pained expression. His manner bordered on the surly but, for all that, he was an efficient fellow and not the sort to demand sympathy unnecessarily.

He took the glass and sipped at it gently. ‘Thank you, Monsieur,’ he said. Even in private, we maintained the forms. It was always ‘Monsieur’ rather than ‘Madame’. I may have been born a woman but I had chosen to live my life as a man. Employing a valet was an important part of that and, for a modest monthly fee, the Frenchman was happy to go along with the charade.

‘Did you see who hit you?’ I asked him.

‘No, Monsieur.’

‘Pity.’ I poured myself another whisky and had a brief look around. There was no sign of a cosh or any other blunt instrument. ‘He must have clambered in through the window,’ I guessed. The flat was mercifully small – just a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms – so there was not much for an intruder to get his teeth into.

Maurice had recovered himself slightly. ‘Shall I call the police, Monsieur?’

‘Lord, no!’ I baulked at that. The last thing I wanted was the local boys crawling all over the place. ‘Not before I speak to the minister anyway.’ There was nothing of a sensitive nature kept in the apartment, but as a foreign national and an employee of the British legation in Guatemala City, I would require the minister’s approval before involving the police. ‘We need to see if anything was taken.’ I shuffled across the room to examine the open bureau. ‘I didn’t keep any cash in there. Just a few odds and sods. Certainly nothing valuable.’

‘A burglar would not know that, Monsieur.’

‘No, I suppose not. The only money in the house is in the drawer next to my bed. Oh, apart from anything you have.’ Maurice was given a small allowance for housekeeping, on top of his wages.

‘A few dollars only, Monsieur. And some local currency.’

‘Did he try to come into your room? The burglar?’

‘No, Monsieur.’

I downed the second whisky. ‘But you heard him moving about?’

‘I am a light sleeper Monsieur.’ That was certainly true. The man had excellent hearing too. He would know the difference between his master blundering about, answering a call of nature, and some devil of an intruder.

‘We’ve had a lucky escape, Morris. We might have been murdered in our beds.’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘Oh, how’s that head of yours?’

‘I will survive, Monsieur.’

I glanced down at the bureau again. One of the drawers had been pulled right out and emptied of its papers. It was an internal drawer, inside the top of the bureau. The flap had been pulled down so that the burglar could look inside. ‘That’s odd,’ I remarked.

‘Monsieur?’

I peered at it closely. ‘There’s a second drawer here. I never noticed that before.’

Maurice rose up from the sofa and came across to take a look.

‘You see? It’s inside the first one.’ I thrust a hand into the larger drawer and slid the tiny compartment back inside the first. ‘Good lord,’ I exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t even know it was there.’ I stared down at the thing. ‘How do you even open it?’

‘A catch, Monsieur.’ The valet indicated a slight irregularity in the wood.

I pressed against it, but nothing happened. Then I caught a fingernail on the edge and teased it back. The hidden drawer popped out again. ‘Some kind of spring.’

‘The burglar knew what he was looking for, Monsieur.’

I stepped back and digested the implications of that. I had been living in this flat for about eight weeks now. Before that, so far as I knew, the place had been empty. ‘What on earth could have been in there?’ I wondered.

––––––––

‘That was where your predecessor was sitting when he shot himself,’ David Richards pointed out maliciously. He was a tall, solidly built man with jet black hair and a pug nose. ‘You can still see the bullet hole in the wall behind you.’ Richards was our head of mission at the legation. He spoke like an aristocrat but looked like a boxer. It was only the second time he had deigned to speak to me. On the first occasion, in the main building, he had made his disapproval evident. ‘I don’t like spies,’ he had informed me testily. ‘My job is to establish cordial relations with the new government and promote British interests in Guatamala. If you do anything to jeopardize that mission, you will be on the first boat back to Blighty.’ Officially, Richards was my boss. I was the new head of passport control at the legation – in reality, me and two secretaries – and he was my immediate superior; but we both knew I had other, more shadowy masters back in London, to whom I was ultimately responsible. Richards was unhappy, however, with the idea of anything happening outside of his direct control. ‘Mr Markham overstepped the mark,’ he continued now, referring to my unfortunate predecessor. ‘Got involved with people he had no business getting involved with. And now we see the consequences.’ Giles Markham had committed suicide at the end of March, a fact no-one had bothered to inform me of before I had accepted the job. Something to do with gambling debts, apparently. Markham had been creaming off some of the visa receipts collected by the passport office, presumably to pay off his creditors, and it had all got out of hand.

‘And you think that might have something to do with the robbery?’ I asked.

Richards shook his head. ‘Don’t be absurd, man. If Giles Markham had left anything important in that apartment, someone would have been in there long before now. It must be over three months since he died. In any case, the place was given a thorough going over at the time. Are you sure this burglar of yours didn’t look anywhere else, apart from the bureau?’ I had given Richards a full account of the break-in.

‘No. And so far as I know, there was nothing of any value in there; or in the whole flat. All the sensitive material – the code books, passports, money – they’re all with you at the legation or in the safe over there.’ I gestured to a strong box in the corner of the room. The passport control office was a couple of doors down from the legation itself. ‘Whoever broke in last night, they were only after one thing. Though what that might be, I have no idea.’

‘Have you spoken to Miss Bunting?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Emily Bunting was one of the clerks in my office. ‘I spoke to her first thing this morning.’ Miss Bunting was a bubbly young thing in her early twenties. She had started work at the legation a few weeks before me. Apparently, she had arrived in Guatemala City the week Markham had died. A lack of available accommodation had forced her to take up temporary residence in the flat for the first few weeks before I had turned up at the beginning of May; a fact I had not previously been aware of. ‘She never went near the bureau. And she says there was no suspicious activity in the block while she was staying there.’

Richards grimaced. ‘I really don’t have time for this nonsense. I’m sure you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ I said. ‘Should I inform the Guatemalan police? As a courtesy?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ He growled. ‘We don’t want them involved. It was bad enough the last time, when your predecessor put that bullet in his head. The last thing we need is them clomping around again in their size eleven boots. That is exactly the sort of unpleasantness we are looking to avoid. One of our apartments broken into in the dead of night. They’ll take it as a personal affront, implying that they can’t keep their streets safe at night.’

I laughed. ‘Have you been out on the streets at night?’ No-one in their right mind would risk venturing out in this city after dark.

‘Things are improving,’ Richards stated tersely. ‘And I don’t want to hear you implying anything different. I suggest we draw a veil over this whole matter.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Now get back to work. I can’t afford to waste any more time on this. But bear in mind, Mr Buxton...Mr Bland, whatever you call yourself these days, I have my eye on you. If you cause me any trouble, I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks. Remember, you do not have diplomatic immunity. If you get caught breaking any local law, no matter how trivial, you’re on your own. I can do nothing to protect you. Good day.’ And with that, he stormed out of the office.

I stared after him, barely managing to contain my own anger. Who the devil did he think he was, talking to me like that? I wasn’t his lackey. Richards was a weaselly little bean-counter, putting on airs and graces. I didn’t have to take that kind of nonsense from him. If his career had amounted to anything, he wouldn’t be a chargé d’affaires in such an absurd backwater; he’d be a fully fledged ambassador somewhere important. Oh, I knew Richards type well enough: happy to fawn and ingratiate himself with presidents and foreign diplomats, but showing his true colours closer to home. My father would have taken a whip to him.

‘Mr Buxton?’ a voice piped up from the doorway.

I frowned. Henry Buxton. My latest nom de plume. I was still getting used to the name. It was the second new identity I had adopted in as many years. It did not have quite the same gravitas as my real name – Hilary Manningham-Butler – but at least I had been able to retain the initials. I had been sorely tempted to restore my title as well, when I had written out the passport using one of the blanks in the office in New York. In a previous life, I had been a baronet and Sir Henry Buxton would have had a nice ring to it. However, some thoughtful soul had pointed out that as the head of mission in Guatemala – Mr Richards – had not yet been knighted, it would not be the done thing to outrank him. I had reluctantly conceded the logic of that. Having met the man in question, however, I was tempted to go back and make one final adjustment to that passport.

‘Yes, what it is?’ I snapped, looking up at the figure in the doorway.

William Battersby, my secretary, did not flinch. He was a slender, quiet fellow in his mid twenties, efficient and anxious to please. ‘Didn’t go well, sir?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’ I stood up and marched over to the sideboard. It wasn’t ten o’clock yet, but I needed a stiff drink.

William observed me quietly as I filled up the glass. He was carrying a bundle of papers with him. ‘We’re just about to open up.’

I grimaced. Another working day. That was another thing I was having to get used to: a nine to five job. It wasn’t right, a woman of my calibre. Not that William – or anybody else here – had the slightest idea about that. The Foreign Office did not allow women to occupy senior positions. Thankfully, the department was only open to the public between 10am and 1pm. ‘Any takers today?’ I asked, taking a swig of whisky and slumping back into my chair.

William nodded. ‘A couple of people waiting, sir. Smartly dressed, too.’ Most of the visa applications we received were from local businessmen. They were the only ones who would have the wherewithal to visit the United Kingdom. ‘I’ve got the files you wanted, sir. And you asked me to remind you about your four o’clock appointment.’

‘I haven’t forgotten.’ I downed the rest of the whisky and William handed the paperwork across. ‘Well, better open up then. Oh, and close the door behind you. I’m not to be disturbed.’ Better to keep the rabble at a distance while I read through these files. The secretary obediently pulled the door shut behind him. His desk was in the outer room, opposite Miss Bunting. It was there that most of the visa applications would be processed.

My own office was reserved for more serious work. The room was painfully small, with just one grated window, a filing cabinet and a corner safe. A large wooden fan rotated laboriously above my head but all it ever seemed to do was redistribute the dust. I glanced down at the files William had given me. The latest reports from Nicaragua and Honduras. Our office did not just provide visas for rich Guatemalans; we were passport control for most of Central America. And that was only the day job. These reports were of a more sensitive nature.

I scowled. Who was I trying to fool? Nothing that happened in this part of the world was of any interest to the mandarins back home. The Secret Intelligence Service needed a presence in Central America, for form’s sake, but the days of British influence in this part of the world were slowly drawing to a close. The highest item on the ministerial agenda was Guatemalan loan repayments. It was a dead end job in a backward country. And the worst of it was, they wouldn’t even have offered me this position if my predecessor hadn’t taken it upon himself to commit suicide. I was not exactly an experienced field operative. One posting with MI5 in Gibraltar and a couple of years in the back office hardly qualified me for a position of any real responsibility. And so I had ended up here, passport control officer in a banana republic, playing second fiddle to the likes of Mr David Richards.

I poured myself another whisky and opened the first folder.

––––––––

‘You are looking tired, Mr Buxton,’ Jorge Navarro observed with some sympathy. He was a handsome, olive skinned man in his early thirties with a tasteful moustache and a comfortably symmetrical face. ‘Perhaps we should cut the lesson short?’

Rain was pelting the window of the small south-facing classroom. It always seemed to rain in Guatemala in the afternoons. The country had a more temperate climate than I had expected; but what it lacked in temperature it made up for in precipitation. The rain arrived in short, heavy bursts every afternoon, almost like clockwork. Perhaps my perception was a little skewed. I had made the mistake of arriving at the beginning of the rainy season.

‘No, no, we’d better continue.’ I smiled grimly at the tutor. I had never had much of an aptitude for languages and a year or so living in Gibraltar had given me barely more than a passing acquaintance with the language. Now that I was living in a Spanish speaking country, however, it was only right that I should make some effort to learn the lingo. ‘People will start to notice if I don’t get any better fairly soon. I just can’t get to grips with these pronouns,’ I muttered. ‘Damn things are the wrong way around.’

The lecturer nodded sympathetically. ‘It is never easy for a man of your age to start learning a language from scratch.’

‘I’m not that old,’ I said. Forty-two was barely middle aged. I might have developed a few grey hairs and my waistline had probably expanded an inch or two over the last couple of years, but I still had a firm jaw and a pleasingly masculine voice. ‘I’m not quite ready for the knackers yard just yet.’

We finished the lesson and I closed up the text book. Navarro was a good teacher but he was probably wasting his time with me. Our regular meetings had, however, served to provide me with a great deal of other information.

‘You saw Giles Markham, didn’t you?’ I asked, finally getting down to the important business. ‘A few days before he died?’

‘Yes. It was he who recruited me,’ Navarro said. The professor had been our mole at the University of San Carlos for some years now. The Guatemalan government had its fair share of spies, in every town and village, so it was only reasonable that we should have a few of our own. The lecturer scratched his moustache and leaned forward. As a professor of Spanish, no-one questioned his right to provide lessons for minor diplomats and functionaries such as myself; and he was young enough and sufficiently charismatic to mix well with the students too. As such, he was well placed to provide the office with advance warning of any potential unrest in the capital. Political change in Central America always begins with the universities and Navarro was a reliable barometer, not just for Guatemala but for the whole region.

Strictly speaking, the internal politics of these tin-pot little countries was of no concern to the SIS. Our remit was to gather information regarding potential threats to the United Kingdom and there were precious few of those on this side of the Atlantic. Even the possibility of communist subversion, which was forever being bandied about by those who had little notion of what it actually meant, was not really within our sphere of reference in this part of the world. But information is power, as some wise old soak once said, and any advance warning of a change in the status quo would always be of value. David Richards had his own lines of intelligence, but I was expected to dig a little deeper and not concern myself too much with protocol.

‘How did he seem to you?’ I asked, following up the reference to my late, lamented predecessor. Giles Markham had used the same cover story I had to visit the lecturer each week. I had told Navarro about the break in at Markham’s old flat.

‘A little distracted, but then he always was. I had the impression he was thinking about his next appointment. He was always two steps ahead.’

‘But he didn’t seem unnecessarily worried?’

‘Not that I could tell. I was shocked when I heard he had shot himself.’ Navarro shuddered at the memory.

‘What did you make of him? Generally, I mean? You must have spent quite a bit of time with him.’

The lecturer considered. ‘He was a lively, outgoing man. Not the kind to brood or worry. Why, do you think his death may have had something to do with your break-in?’

‘I have no idea,’ I admitted. ‘But I am staying in the same apartment as him. And it’s clear the thief was looking for something in particular.’

Navarro shrugged. ‘I wish I could help you.’

‘Not to worry.’ I stretched my arms above my head and sat back in my chair. ‘How are things going here at the university? Has everything quietened down a bit?’ There had been some bother back in March when the government had banned a student rally and the youngsters had gone out onto the streets. It had caused a major diplomatic incident, after the police had arrested several dozen students from neighbouring El Salvador.

‘Back to normal, I think,’ Navarro confirmed. ‘The president may not like the new regime in El Salvador but he knows it is not in his interest to upset them.’

‘He’s barely settling into the role himself.’ General Jorge Ubico had come to power in Guatemala at the beginning of February.

‘He has a lot of good will on his side. And a popular mandate.’

‘So everybody says.’ I chuckled. ‘But it’s not difficult to win an election when nobody’s standing against